Reviews for Linksys NAS200 Network Storage Server

Review of NAS200

Strengths: Removeable/replaceable drives, raid, web interface, quiet, price.

Weakness: No USB 2.0 connection to a host. Network performance slow. Performance slow for scan disk such as after power-fail, box may not respond.

Nas200 ommits a BT function (e.g. coolmax cn-570).
Copying to drive is slow over network and there is no other copy mechanism (e.g. through USB from another drive or host). Probably not a good choice for several simultaneous users/sessions.

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Great idea. Bad performance

Strengths: Design, portability, expansibility

Weakness: Network performance. Internal data transfer.

Thats a great Idea. People must understand that it must work in Network. Have a NAS using like a pendrive only, buy a pendrive. Its NAS. That was the design I liked. Black, silver for my Dell computer design. The two bay HDD is so great Ideal. Also for RAID 0 or 1. The 2 USB ports, perfect Idea too. I can put external Usb HDD, pendrive, so perfect. I didnt put it in RAID 0 option (that would double the performance) but as the network compatibilty is 100mpbs and also the wireless perfomance not good too (54mbps, or 36mbps) I dont know if 2x 3.0gbps in Raid 0 will change much in performance. It would, but, I think will not. But the idea is great. You can share all data with password protection. Have a public folder and the personal one. Im in Brazil (hot), but I dont know how long it will be ok ( the fan ). Cause here it works almost 100% of time fan is on. Thats good for documents, pictures and sound, but not good for Videos or softwares through wireless.
It does not work well when more than one person is accessing at the same time the NAS. With only 100mbps, simoutaneusly, it becomes too too slow for songs, videos, and also copy/paste actions.

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Reasonably Priced Dual Drive NAS

Strengths: Nice black color. Takes two drives for Raid 1. Can connect two USB drives when needed. Extremely simple installation process.

Weakness: Not quiet when running, but you can set the fan to turn off after 10 mins of inactivity. Speed over wireless is not great, but that just might be my wireless setup.

You can get it for just $100. Can upgrade extremely easily. A good budget NAS. Will not recommend this if your purpose is use move huge video files. I would recommend this for any casual user that wants a home NAS.

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Awful Design

Strengths: Ease of installing drives, expandability, price.

Weakness: Heat dissipation problems.

I am editing my original review to show longer term experience with this device.
Here is my original comment:
The device was easy enough to install but has some software shortcomings. I am trying to map drives to it from Windows Vista Ultimate and for some reason I get prompted for the password every time. I have talked to Linksys and they can't seem to find an explanation.

This is my current reaction:
When you try to use this device for continuous access for any long period, it overheats severely and it becomes unresponsive. Note that this might be my experience with my particular drive setup. I was using a single Western Digital WD4000KD 400 GB Caviar SE drive. When I was doing my initial data copy, the device would copy about 600 MB and performance would degrade gradually until the drive was inaccessible. The Web interface was still responsive but nothing could be done with the drive.
After doing some research on the Linksys forums (Linksys support was clueless), I found out that heat is a major problem with these devices and people's recommendations were to place a fan blowing directly at the unit whenever performing any large data copies. This to me is unacceptable.
I thought the problem was specific to the one unit I was using but after exchanging it for a another one I still had the same problems.
Another issue is that whenever the device is restarted and it needs to do a drive check for whatever reason, you need to wait for that process to complete and hear the double beep to be able to access the drive. This process took sometimes close to an hour in my case when I restarted the device to see if the access problem went away.
I returned the unit and have bought a D-Link DNS-323 which I have been using for only a day but does not show any of the problems the Linksys showed. I was able to copy over 300GB of data without any problems.

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By member: tschmitz - Sep 24, 2009

NAS200 Network Storage Enclosure

Strengths: The hard drives can be installed by simply slipping them in the drive bays.

Weakness: This device does not have a Gigabit ethernet connection.

Basically, I bought this device because it was cheap and because it was made by Linksys like my router. Although this device does the job, it is a little slow. Maybe the next model will be a little better.

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NAS200

Strengths: compatible with 1TB drives, web browser, media server

Weakness: must overheat because it constantly shutsdown, copies over 50gb are slow (real slow) even from laptop with 1gb, gigabit switch and this device as the only things attached.

I agree with pgonza02, I have had the similar overheat problems. I have two 1TB drives in a RAID 1 and this device would constantly shutdown. The device always must be doing a rebuild of some sort aft

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Supports my needs...

Strengths: Very easy to install the drive(s), nice small form factor, has two USB ports for the installation of additional external drives, nice back-up software included with the unit.

Weakness: Security features are not provided for USB drives attached, back-up software (NTI Shadow) is for PCs only.

I purchased this unit to provide back-ups of important documents and files for all of the computers in the house (Macs and PCs). After unsuccessfully trying to build one from an old PC, I tried this unit. The first unit was defective and would shut down anytime you plugged a hard drive into the USB port.

After exchanging the unit for a new one, things got better. I have two GB drives installed with one external hard drive that already had data on it. The installation was easy, the web based interface took me through the steps to format the drives and when I plugged in the external drive, it recognized it, and provided access to the files already on the drive (no formatting required).

I installed the back-up software on two PCs, then realized that they did not provide a Mac version. So now I am on the hunt for Mac back-up software.

Overall I am satisfied. I am not doing a lot of streaming of content or anything too difficult. The unit has performed well - no heat problems (this was mentioned in another review), the back-ups I have scheduled happen when they should, and the speed is as you would expect over a network.

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Linksys NAS200

Testseek.com has collected 11 expert reviews for Linksys NAS200 and the average expert rating is 57 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

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